The Yahoo message boards are now a litany of Ad Hominem attacks against everyone that has contributed content to the site, or has been key in exposing the naked short selling crisis. The attack method has shifted from, “Patrick is crazy, a liar, or a crook” to, “These guys are all liars, or kooks, or crooks.”
Classic Ad Hominem, if not particularly skillfully executed. For those that don’t know the definition of Ad Hominem, here is today’s Latin lesson, from a poster on the Yahoo boards:
“Translated from Latin to English, "Ad Hominem" means "against the man" or "against the person."
An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim). Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting). This type of "argument" has the following form:
Person A makes claim X.
Person B makes an attack on person A.
Therefore A's claim is false.
The reason why an Ad Hominem (of any kind) is a fallacy is that the character, circumstances, or actions of a person do not (in most cases) have a bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim being made (or the quality of the argument being made).
Example of Ad Hominem
Bill: "I believe that abortion is morally wrong."
Dave: "Of course you would say that, you're a priest."
Bill: "What about the arguments I gave to support my position?"
Dave: "Those don't count. Like I said, you're a priest, so you have to say that abortion is wrong. Further, you are just a lackey to the Pope, so I can't believe what you say.”
The reason that the bad guys are resorting to Ad Hominem is that they cannot debate nor challenge the facts – thus, they seek to denigrate the reputation of the speaker. They do this because they are intellectually weak, lack factual rebuttals, and are flailing. It is a lazy person’s argument style, and is dishonest in the extreme, as it seeks to avoid the facts of the discussion.
It is transparent, and childish, and nobody does it with less finesse than our old friend the Weiss-meister.
Weiss has apparently made it a daily event now on his forgettable blog-offering to name-call, and disseminate incorrect information. Why he is reduced to that is unknown. He refers to anyone that understands the FTD crisis as “Baloney Brigade”, he garbles his lines, and has made a hobby out of hurling feces through the bars of his cage at anyone foolish enough to draw near. He has yet to cite any factual evidence for his declaration that. “there is no FTD problem,” nor really for any of his other inanities. I don’t read his pap, but there are organized teams of bashers working the message boards, whose every 10th posts are a link to his blog, so it is hard to avoid some of it – and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that he is the new hedge fund mouthpiece and Wall Street apologist – even as he claims to be exposing Wall Street’s corruption. The irony is not lost on anyone but Weiss and the message board touts. I won’t devote a lot of space here to his scribblings, but three are noteworthy as examples of how the other side works.
The first is his claiming that the DTCC subpoenas were a rumor, and that I was full of it. After that was exposed as incorrect, it shifted to “that’s old news.” What was left out was that: A) If it was old news, why didn’t the great Weiss know about it, or at least possess the rudimentary skills to verify it after it was broken here?; and B) His mockery of the story was dead wrong. The next piece was where he claimed that my Rocker Partners formal SEC investigation piece was a rehash of TheStreet.com’s article in which it was mentioned in passing that the SEC was “investigating” the claims against Gradient and Rocker. What was left out there was: A) TheStreet.com journalist admitted that he didn’t know about the formal investigation at the time of the article; B) That information was communicated to Weiss, and he chose to ignore it; and C) His lack of investigative ability extends to being unable to verify that story, as well. A footnote is that he censored a comment on his blog by the gentleman who had the exchange with TheStreet – clearly to avoid being exposed as a fraud.
The third example was his breakthrough piece that Dr. Jim DeCosta is a dentist. This hard hitting piece involved looking up his phone number. That Jim is a dentist has exactly nothing to do with the fact that he is also a scholar of the securities business, and an expert on clearing and settlement. The fallacy in this line of argument is simple to demolish – Einstein was a patent office clerk, and part-time physicist. Gates was a college drop out, and computer enthusiast. The presence or absence of an advanced degree in a subject means exactly nothing in terms of acumen – an example being that Weiss has a journalism degree and is an ex-BW writer, and yet can’t track down basic information about simple stories – the DTCC and Rocker pieces, for instance.
The approach seems to be to denigrate the folks who are raising awareness of the FTD crisis. Bud is being attacked in, surprise, Mark Cuban’s blog, - which a lot of the Elgindy bashers are known to frequent – funny how the turds tend to gravitate to common areas (Elgindy, as we all know, is now facing a life sentence for stock manipulation). DeCosta is being attacked in a limp wrested fashion by Weiss. I am being attacked by Weiss and an entire battalion of message board bashers, working ‘round the clock.
A lot of personal attacks, but no discussion of the issues. I don’t blame them – I wouldn’t want to discuss them, either. Every time a discussion ensues, they get their heads handed to them. Who needs that kind of grief?
Now, on to today’s news. Yesterday the DTCC issued a statement confirming that the DTCC had received a subpoena a few months ago from Connecticut. The information requested was ultimately provided to that state, via the SEC. Here is the release:
“DTCC and the State of Connecticut Issue Joint Statement
The Connecticut Banking Department’s Securities Division submitted a subpoena requesting production of certain records from The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) several months ago, related to an investigation the Conn. Banking Dept. is conducting of third parties. DTCC facilitated a response to this request through the SEC (DTCC's primary regulator) and the information has been obtained.
The Connecticut State Banking Department and DTCC are jointly issuing this statement to correct any mischaracterizations and misinformation about the communication between our two organizations.”
So, the Bunny’s story was accurate, although a few issues are left: 1) I claimed that the DTCC gave the middle finger to the states – not clear that they didn’t, and that the states didn’t then go to the SEC, who got the info for them. Nobody has clarified that, but it might well explain why they didn’t simply send me an email saying, “You got it wrong.” Because I didn’t. 2) The only place you heard about these subpoenas was from me on Sunday, until FinancialWire broke the story early Wed., and then the NY Post had an article about it in Thursday’s issue. That raises the question, “How many other subpoenas haven’t we heard about?” Fair question. 3) There is the matter of the UT subpoena(s), which aren’t discussed in the release, although they were confirmed by the NY Post.
Still no word has been issued by anyone about the Rocker Partners/Gradient formal investigation and subpoena story – which speaks volumes. As you know, their attorneys were formally requested to correct any element of my story that was incorrect, and they didn’t.
Would it surprise anyone to learn that I now have word that Rocker was served with a subpoena about ten days ago?
So here’s a question: Why can’t the geniuses out there that are investing so much time into demonizing everyone connected to exposing the NSS crisis, invest 45 seconds into a phone call to confirm this story?
Curious, no?
Seems that until they are dragged, kicking and screaming, to a story that is critical of the Wall Street power elite, they ignore any negative info.
But they have a problem now. Many thousands read this blog every day now. The word is spreading – and traffic is increasing. So the story is getting out, and awareness is growing, and stories that were broken here are now being shown to be true by the mainstream press. That renders the Ad Hominem attacks largely ineffective, as the veracity of the message is confirmed, even as the messenger is attacked. Most thinking adults will look at the attack and go, “Yeah, so?”
I actually think that it is noteworthy that the intensity of the attacks has radically increased over the last week – that says that their composure is crumbling, and someone is feeling the pressure. It’s no longer, “Byrne’s a kook or a crook” – now it is everyone from Rod Young to the Easter Bunny is bad.
Why sure we are. Bad bad bad.
And meanwhile, the word is spreading, and the façade of composure and legitimacy is crumbling.
Just another day in the life of the Bunny.